While the exact role the Comanche Indians played in the Plains trading systems is still unclear, the details of the Western Comanche trade center can prove a clearer, more accurate and richer portrayal of the historical event (253). Comanches were apart of a bison hunting Shoshone group. Shoshone reentered grasslands through a southern route in the 1700. In their travels, they came into contact with the Utes and adopted the Utes practices. It is how the Spanish came up with the name Comanche. Although, the Native trading power would not be an everlasting one, Western Comanche kept their occupancy at the top, for a substantial amount of time. With a variety of activities, Western Comanches demonstrated a unique trading culture. The migration …show more content…
Tribal migrations gave way to a thriving trading center and a Western Comanche upraise. The trading center facilitated trade among both tribes and foreigners, like French and Germans (260) . The Kiowa, Apache and Comanche are tribes known for creating the historical Plains economy (252). Well this is true, Hamalainen shares the new studies on how Western Comanche Indians operated a major trading enterprise. Comanche division took place in the 1740’s and 1750’s. Some went southeast to Texas and others went west to New Mexico, dividing into “specialized traders” and “ focused raiders” (257). Hamalainen states, “Western Comanche qualify better as specialized traders. The Eastern Comanche commercial system never became as extensive as that of their western relatives, for they focused increasingly on raiding the wealthy.” Hamalainen examines the importance of Western Comanches’ role as skilled distributors, their attempts to cut out the middlemen and their solid ability to communicate …show more content…
It came with the Bent’s brother fort establishment, in the early 1830’s. This commercial point became a new center for trade, among Southern Plains tribes, Santa Fe traders and New Mexicans. This completely cut out Western Comanches as the middleman. Comanches remain an operative trader at the Bents Fort but were placed as a secondary priority. Bents Fort put an end to trading relation with Comanche in the 1870’s. In order to gather goods, the once top ranking trader took up other tactics (268). “The Western Comanches began to rely increasingly on raiding, inextricably linking themselves with that activity in the minds of the encroaching American as well as later historians”
Beginning in the mid sixteenth century, French explorers were able to establish a powerful and lasting presence in what is now the Northern United States and Canada. The explorers placed much emphasis on searching and colonizing the area surrounding the St. Lawrence River “which gave access to the Great Lakes and the heart of the continent”(Microsoft p?). They began exploring the area around 1540 and had early interactions with many of the Natives, which made communication easier for both peoples when the French returned nearly fifty years later. The French brought a new European desire for fur with them to America when they returned and began to trade with the Indians for furs in order to supply the European demands. The Natives and the French were required to interact with each other in order to make these trades possible, and, over time, the two groups developed a lasting alliance. However, the French began to face strong competition in the fur trading industry, which caused many problems between different European nations and different native tribes. Therefore, the trading of fur allowed early seven- teenth century French explorers to establish peaceful relations with the Natives, however, com- petitive trading also incited much quarreling between competing colonies and Indian tribes.
There are three parts in West’s book; the first part focuses on the sociological, ecological and economic relationships of the plains Indians, starting with the first establish culture of North America, the Clovis peoples. Going into extensive detail pertaining to early geology and ecology, West gives us a glimpse into what life on the early plains must have looked to early peoples. With vastly differing flora and fauna to what we know today, the early plains at the end of the first ice age, were a different place and lent itself to a diverse way of life. The Clovis peoples were accomplished hunters, focusing on the abundance of Pleistocene megafauna such as earlier, larger forms of bison. Though, little human remains were found, evidence of their s...
Indian Givers How the Indians of the Americas transformed the world. This paper tries to explain Jack Weatherford's Indian Givers by examining the history of the Native American connection to many agricultural products that would not have been produced without the knowledge that Indians gave. Weatherford further stipulates that it is through these advances in agriculture that the United States has remained a strong contender in the global market, that without the influences of the Native Americans on the early settlers those early immigrants to America would not have survived. Through his work, "Indian Givers: How Indians of the Americas Transformed the World", Weatherford brings an insight to a people that most individuals have neglected to consider. The paper concludes that it is Weatherford's purpose to demonstrate that Native Americans have been a misrepresented and forgotten people when the history of North America is discussed.
In the introduction, Hämäläinen introduces how Plains Indians horse culture is so often romanticized in the image of the “mounted warrior,” and how this romanticized image is frequently juxtaposed with the hardships of disease, death, and destruction brought on by the Europeans. It is also mentioned that many historians depict Plains Indians equestrianism as a typical success story, usually because such a depiction is an appealing story to use in textbooks. However, Plains Indians equestrianism is far from a basic story of success. Plains equestrianism was a double-edged sword: it both helped tribes complete their quotidian tasks more efficiently, but also gave rise to social issues, weakened the customary political system, created problems between other tribes, and was detrimental to the environment.
Any discussion of the American culture and its development has to include mythology, because that is where most of the information about early America is found. Mythology is a unique source in that it gives a shared understanding that people have with regard to some aspect of their world. The most important experience for American frontiersmen is the challenge to the “myth of the frontier” that they believed in – “the conception of America as a wide-open land of unlimited opportunity for the strong, ambitious, self-reliant individual to thrust his way to the top.” (Slotkin, 5) In particular, the challenge came from Indians and from the wilderness that they inhabited.
Indian nations like the Cheyenne Tribe, the Choctaw tribe and the Navajo tribe are often overlooked, though they have been quite influential in our history as a continuously growing world. Modern culture and society cares nothing for the start of the tribes, nor their modern state, their help to our beginning and continuance, or to the modern culture and society of those indian tribes.
hunted with bows and arrows and as the years went on and how they trade with other tribes and
Vilbert, Elizabeth. Traders' Tales: Narratives of Cultural Encounters in the Columbia Plateau, 1807-1846. University of Oklahoma Press, 1997.
Over the years, the idea of the western frontier of American history has been unjustly and falsely romanticized by the movie, novel, and television industries. People now believe the west to have been populated by gun-slinging cowboys wearing ten gallon hats who rode off on capricious, idealistic adventures. Not only is this perception of the west far from the truth, but no mention of the atrocities of Indian massacre, avarice, and ill-advised, often deceptive, government programs is even present in the average citizen’s understanding of the frontier. This misunderstanding of the west is epitomized by the statement, “Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis was as real as the myth of the west. The development of the west was, in fact, A Century of Dishonor.” The frontier thesis, which Turner proposed in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition, viewed the frontier as the sole preserver of the American psyche of democracy and republicanism by compelling Americans to conquer and to settle new areas. This thesis gives a somewhat quixotic explanation of expansion, as opposed to Helen Hunt Jackson’s book, A Century of Dishonor, which truly portrays the settlement of the west as a pattern of cruelty and conceit. Thus, the frontier thesis, offered first in The Significance of the Frontier in American History, is, in fact, false, like the myth of the west. Many historians, however, have attempted to debunk the mythology of the west. Specifically, these historians have refuted the common beliefs that cattle ranging was accepted as legal by the government, that the said business was profitable, that cattle herders were completely independent from any outside influence, and that anyone could become a cattle herder.
While the far-away North American tribes were having their land taken away, and being harassed by white American expansionists, they also faced another threat: Spanish occupation. During the early-1500’s, many Spanish explorers and conquistadors, such as Cabeza de Vaca, wished to find gold and riches and, in the process, they harassed, oppressed, tortured, and spread deadly diseases to the Native tribes. They often used the excuse of racial class-separation, known as “castas,” to justify their rotten, atrocious crimes. Throughout the 1600’s and 1700’s, the focus of the Spanish explorers experienced a shift from conquistadors wishing to acquire gold and wealth to Catholic missionaries wishing to religiously convert the Native tribes and, as a result, they built up many churches on the land. As one might guess, the
The Cheyenne Tribe of native american indians are one of the most well known tribes in the plains. Originally in the 1600’s the Cheyenne Tribe lived in stationary villages in the east part of the country. They would rely on farming to make money and to feed their family. The Cheyennes occupied what is now Minnesota. In the 1700’s the Cheyennes migrated to North Dakota and settled on a river. The river provides a source of fresh water and many animals would go there so hunting would be easier.In 1780 a group of indians called the “Ojibwas” forced them out and they crossed the Missouri River and followed the buffalo herd on horseback. In the early 1800’s they migrated to the high plains. Later they divided into the North Cheyenne and the South
A single group of indigenous people or single Native American group does not exist but many. Early America had many groups of Native Americans that can be organized by regions: Eastern Woodlands, Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and Great Basin. This analysis will focus on the Southwest Native Americas. The Southwest refers to modern day Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Northern Mexico. This region consisted of three major cultures, the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi people. In the Southwest, all three groups engaged in extensive farming more than groups in the Eastern Woodlands. This extensive farming proved that these Native Americans were settlers created pueblo villages complete with dwellings. The Hohokam peoples constructed canals as an irrigation system in now modern Arizona. This differed from several other groups of Native Americans usually in the Great Basin that were nomadic, following their food, the bison. Specialization in sophisticated crafts such as ceramics, pottery, and basket weaving emerged in the Southwest. Especially important and distinctive to Southwest Native Americans was maize, co...
The movement westward during the late 1800’s created new tensions among already strained relations with current Native American inhabitants. Their lands, which were guaranteed to them via treaty with the United States, were now beginning to be intruded upon by the massive influx of people migrating from the east. This intrusion was not taken too kindly, as Native American lands had already been significantly reduced due to previous westward conquest. Growing resentment for the federal government’s Reservation movement could be felt among the native population. One Kiowa chief’s thoughts on this matter summarize the general feeling of the native populace. “All the land south of the Arkansas belongs to the Kiowas and Comanches, and I don’t want to give away any of it” (Edwards, 203). His words, “I don’t want to give away any of it”, seemed to a mantra among the Native Americans, and this thought would resound among them as the mounting tensions reached breaking point.
For at least fifteen thousand years before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and Thomas Hariot, Native Americans had occupied the vastness of North America undisturbed by outside invaders (Shi 2015 pg. 9). Throughout the years leading up to Columbus’s voyage to the “New World” (the Americas) and Hariot’s journey across the sea, the Indians had encountered and adapted to many diverse continents; due to global warming, climatic and environmental diversity throughout the lands (2015). Making the Native Americans culture, religion, and use of tools and technology very strange to that of Columbus’s and Hariot’s more advanced culture and economy, when they first came into contact with the Native Americans.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.